During Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS), the airway is prone to narrowing and/or collapse while the patient sleeps. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy seeks to avoid this narrowing by supplying pressure to splint the airway open. With CPAP this splinting pressure is constant and is optimized during a sleep study to be sufficient in magnitude to prevent narrowing of the airway. Providing a constant splinting pressure (i.e., CPAP) is a simple solution to the problem posed by the collapsing airway. However, this approach exposes the patient to pressures that are higher than the pressures needed to support the airway for most of the breathing cycle.
During inspiration, the pressure created within the lungs is lower than the pressure at the nose. This pressure difference drives the flow of air into the lungs. This pressure difference creates a pressure gradient in the airway connecting the lungs with the nose. That is to say, the nose is typically at ambient pressure while the lungs and airway of the patient are at sub-ambient or negative pressures. This negative pressure acts upon the airway and contributes to its collapse. CPAP levels are typically set to raise the pressure level in the entire respiratory system to the level required to both eliminate the sub-ambient pressures generated by inspiration and overcome any mechanical collapsing forces that result from the structure of the airway tissues, muscle tone, and body position. The inspiratory pressures (i.e., inspiratory positive airway pressure or "IPAP," in bi-level positive airway pressure (bi-level PAP) systems are set in a similar manner.
During exhalation, a positive pressure gradient exists between the interior of the lungs and the exterior of the body. This positive pressure gradient helps to support the airway during exhalation. At the end of exhalation the pressure gradient is essentially zero (flow is likewise zero and the airway is unaffected by respiratory efforts). Any collapse of the airway at the end of exhalation is purely a function of the structure of the airway tissues, muscle tone, and body position. Bi-level devices seek to supply the expiratory pressure required to support the airway at the end of exhalation.
It should be noted that over the course of a breathing cycle the pressure gradients between the lungs and the exterior of the body are not constant. The inspiratory pressure gradient falls from zero at the start of inspiration to a peak negative value and then rises back to zero at the end of inspiration. The expiratory pressure gradient rises from zero at the start of exhalation to a peak value and then falls back to zero as exhalation ends. Because the pressure gradient varies over the breathing cycle, the pressure necessary to overcome airway collapse should ideally vary over the breathing cycle.
CPAP therapy ignores these variations in pressure requirements and provides therapy at one pressure level. CPAP is rather crude and offers far from optimal therapy since the CPAP pressure is based solely on a worst-case treatment parameter, i.e., the peak pressure requirements during inspiration.
Representing an advancement over CPAP, bi-level positive airway pressure (bi-level PAP) therapies seek to take advantage of the different pressure requirements to lower the pressure during exhalation. Nevertheless, bi-level therapies also fail to afford optimal treatment since the inspiratory positive airway pressure (IPAP) of bi-level PAP applied during inspiration is again based on the patient's peak needs encountered during inspiration and the expiratory positive airway pressure (EPAP) of bi-level PAP delivered during expiration is related solely to the support needs at the end of exhalation.
In addition to OSAS, positive airway pressure therapy has been applied in the treatment of other breathing disorders such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD). COPD can be treated with bi-level PAP therapy. One of the problems with this mode of treatment, however, is that the patient has difficulty stopping inspiratory flow. This phenomenon arises from the disparity between applied IPAP pressure and the pressure needed to overcome the patient's respiratory resistance at the end of inspiration. As the former pressure typically exceeds the latter, the "surplus" IPAP pressure at the end of inspiration leads to uncomfortable and potentially harmful hyperinflation of the patient lungs.
Conversely, in order to begin inspiratory flow, a COPD patient must reduce the pressure inside his lungs to a pressure that is less than the ambient pressure at the inlet of his respiratory system. Due to the condition commonly known as "Auto-PEEP," the pressure in the patient's lungs is typically above ambient pressure at the end of exhalation. The patient's breathing muscles thus must perform additional work to expand the lungs and thereby reduce lung pressure below ambient before flow into the lungs can occur. Auto-PEEP is typically treated with a form of resistive counter pressure known as PEEP (positive end expiratory pressure). PEEP is set at a level just below the patient's Auto-PEEP level, thereby reducing the amount of breathing work required to initiate inspiratory flow.
With conventional treatments such as pressure support, CPAP or bi-level therapy, PEEP is achieved by applying the same pressure over the entire phase of expiration, e.g., the EPAP phase of bi-level PAP therapy. It should be noted at this juncture that EPAP is not synonymous with PEEP. EPAP indicates a constant pressure delivered to the patient throughout exhalation while PEEP indicates positive end expiratory pressure. By definition, the PEEP pressure is only required at the end of exhalation. As such, the administration of EPAP throughout the expiratory cycle to assure that satisfactory PEEP is maintained undesirably contributes to the breathing work that a patient must perform during exhalation.
In addition to CPAP and bi-level PAP, other systems have been proposed for clinical research and/or therapeutic application (including treatment of OSAS, COPD and other breathing disorders) that offer an assortment of methods and apparatus by means of which a subject's respiratory efforts may be induced, superseded, assisted and/or resisted. Some of these systems perform their prescribed functions responsive to one or more parameters associated with a subject's respiratory activity including, but not limited to, inspiratory and/or expiratory flow, inspiratory and/or expiratory pressure, tidal volume and symptoms indicative of airway obstruction, e.g., snoring sounds. Some achieve their objectives transthoracically while others deliver air at positive or negative pressure directly to the subject's airway.
An early example of such a system, commonly referred to as an "iron lung," is disclosed in a publication entitled "Mechanical Assistance to Respiration in Emphysema, Results with a Patient-Controlled Servorespirator," authored by James R. Harries, M.D. and John M. Tyler, M.D., published in the American Journal of Medicine, Vol. 36, pp. 68-78, January 1964. The iron lung proposed in that publication is a respirator designed to apply and remove transthoracic pressure to and from the exterior surface of the body of a subject who sits in a large pressurizable chamber in order to assist the patient's respiratory efforts (i.e., the iron lung applies negative pressure during inspiration and either ambient or positive pressure during expiration). Sophisticated for its day, the apparatus continually controlled the internal chamber pressure in response to the patient's spontaneous respiration, specifically in response to detected respiratory flow or volume. Indeed, a signal obtained from a strain gauge pneumograph fastened around the patient's chest was electrically separated into three components: one proportional to volume, another to inspiratory flow and a third to expiratory flow. Each component was assigned a separate gain control. The component signals are then recombined to control the pressure in the chamber by means of an electrically driven variable valve situated between a blower and the chamber.
Although effective for their intended purposes, this and other iron lungs have generally fallen into disfavor because of their bulk, inconvenience, cost and limited application. That is to say, because of their size and cost such equipment is purchased and maintained essentially exclusively by medical facilities such as hospitals and clinics. Further, iron lungs do not lend themselves to treatment of OSAS and related disorders where comfort and unobtrusiveness are critical for patient compliance and treatment efficacy. This is because negative pressure applied during inspiration compounds the factors that operate to collapse the airway during an inspiratory phase.
An essay entitled "An Apparatus for Altering the Mechanical Load of the Respiratory System," authored by M. Younes, D. Bilan, D. Jung and H. Krokes, and published in 1987 by the American Physiological Society, pp. 2491-2499, discloses a system for loading and unloading of a subject's respiratory efforts to effect various respiratory responses. The system may load or unload during inspiration, expiration, or both, to assist or resist a subject's spontaneous respiratory activity. The system may apply a continuous positive or negative pressure directly to the subject's airway and loading or unloading occurs via a command signal generated by detected respiratory flow, volume, applied voltage, an external function, or other source.
A drawback to this system, however, is that but a single resistive gain may be chosen for resistive loading or unloading. This single gain is applied to a "half-wave" of the respiratory cycle (either inspiration or expiration) or the "full-wave" thereof (both inspiration and expiration). In other words, under full-wave respiratory loading or unloading, a single chosen gain value is employed during both inspiration and expiration. Thus, a gain that may produce favorable results in regard to reducing breathing work during inspiration, for example, may cause less than desirable or even detrimental consequences during expiration. The converse is true for a gain selected specifically for optimizing expiratory work reduction.
In addition, the Younes et al. system operates as a closed, leak-proof system. Hence, to predict its ability to function in an open, leak-tolerant system would be problematic. As such, whether it may be adapted to OSAS treatment, which invariably involves some degree of known and unavoidable unknown system leakage, is suspect.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,107,830 to Younes essentially reiterates all of the "breathing assist" (unloading) disclosure that is covered in the Younes, et al. American Physiological Society publication discussed above.
In the system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,107,830, however, the adjustable pressure gain is only realized during inspiration because pressure output is set to zero during exhalation. Additionally, output pressure is calculated as a function of both detected patient inspiratory flow and volume. Furthermore, the system is applicable to COPD but not OSAS therapy.
An article entitled "A Device to Provide Respiratory-Mechanical Unloading," authored by Chi-sang Poon and Susan A. Ward and published in March 1987 in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Vol. BME-33, No. 3, pp. 361-365, is directed to an apparatus which functions somewhat similar to one mode of operation described in both Younes disclosures. That is, the Poon, et al. device may operate to unload a subject's breathing, but only during inspiration. Poon, et al. provide their inspiratory assistance by establishing a positive mouth pressure throughout inspiration in a constant proportion to instantaneous flow. The constant proportion is achieved by (1) selecting a desired gain for a detected positive mouth pressure signal, (2) calculating the ratio of the gain-modified mouth pressure signal over a detected signal reflecting instantaneous flow, (3) comparing the calculated ratio to a selected reference ratio to generate a valve motor control signal, and (4) using the valve motor control signal to operate a motor that drives a servo valve to control the positive pressure applied to the subject's airway. Thus, the apparatus output pressure is determined as a function of both detected pressure and flow. Further, the pressure must be output at a value sufficient to maintain a constant ratio of pressure to flow.
A publication entitled "Servo Respirator Constructed from a Positive-Pressure Ventilator," by John E. Remmers and Henry Gautier, which was published in August, 1976 in the Journal of Applied Physiology, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 252-255, describes a modified ventilator that may function as a "demand" respirator which generates transthoracic pressure proportional to phrenic efferent respiratory discharge. Phrenic efferent respiratory discharge is an indication of the outgoing brain signal to the phrenic nerve which controls diaphragm function. A phrenic efferent respiratory discharge signal causes the diaphragm to contract whereby the subject exerts an inspiratory effort. The phrenic efferent respiratory discharge serves as the apparatus command signal and is processed to produce a moving time average (MTA) and the subject's tracheal pressure serves as a negative feedback signal. Like the Poon et al. device, the Remmers et al. apparatus provides respiratory assistance only during inspiration.
An apparatus for automatically regulating the flow and pressure output of a respirator is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,961,627 to Ernst et al. Like the aforementioned Poon et al. device, however, the Ernst et al. apparatus relies upon an unduly complicated scheme dependent upon detected respiratory pressure and flow in calculating delivered output flow and pressure. More particularly, Ernst et al. propose regulating the delivered flow and pressure of a respiration gas in a respirator during the respiration cycle in which the actual flow and pressure of the respiration gas are measured via a measuring device arranged proximate a patient interface. The measured values are converted into electrical signals and the flow and pressure of the respiration gas are controlled during the inspiration and expiration portions of the respiration cycle via a valve arranged between a respiration gas source and the measuring device. The method for regulating the flow and pressure output comprises (1) measuring the actual flow of respiration gas proximate the patient, (2) measuring the actual pressure of respiration gas proximate the patient, (3) calculating nominal values of flow and pressure from preselected fixed values and the actual values, (4) comparing the actual values measured for the flow and pressure with the nominal values, and (5) obtaining from the comparison a control signal for modulating the valve and thereby regulating the flow and pressure of the respiration gas.
Additionally, apart from its utilization of two detected respiratory parameters (flow and pressure) and the complex manner in which these and other variables are reiteratively processed to produce apparatus flow and pressure output, the Ernst et al. system, although capable of delivering a base pressure equivalent to a patient's required end expiratory pressure, is nevertheless unable to deliver any pressure less than the base pressure. Consequently, the Ernst et al. apparatus requires the patient to perform more breathing work than is necessary to satisfy his respiratory needs, especially in the expiratory phase of a respiration cycle, thereby deleteriously affecting the patient's comfort and likelihood of continued compliance with the treatment.
An advantage exists therefore, for an uncomplicated system operable to deliver pressurized air to the airway of a patient and readily adaptable to the treatment of OSAS, COPD and other respiratory disorders. Such system should be capable of minimizing a patient's breathing work during both the inspiratory and expiratory phases of a respiratory cycle and operable to function in response to a single, easily and accurately detected respiratory parameter such as respiratory flow.